After a long running session I had my iPod nano completely run out of battery power. Arriving home I put it on the charger. I used the one I got for the iPhone, since it goes to the wall outlet.

The following day however when I wanted to do a run the iPod reported that it’s almost out of power again. I didn’t care much at the time since I’m prone to clumsiness and forgetfulness: maybe I just haven’t plugged it in properly.

When I tried to use it again yesterday evening however I couldn’t help to notice that in spite of the iPod being on the charger for more almost a full day it’s still not full. I just stepped out of the door when the music stopped as well. Checking the nano it was booting up as if recovering from some software error. It turned out to be more than a one-time glitch though, since the iPod kept restarting over an over again. Boot up, stay on for about 20-30 seconds then reboot.

I googled the issue a bit but none of the forum complaints seemed to contain anything helpful. Finally I tried connecting the unit to the MacBook and – surprisingly – that solved the reboot issue.

My theories are that either the iPhone charger didn’t agree with the nano (which I find problematic to believe since it’s basically just a wall outlet to USB port adapter) or the prolonged unsynced time paired with running out of power completely triggered some bug in the software.